MANDY: You buying?

MICHAEL: Why? Don’t you have any money?

MANDY: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Can I have some?

MANDY: In your dreams!

MICHAEL: Get your shoes on and meet me in the Jeep.

I put that conversation in my journal, for the record.

Why, you ask?

Because it may be one of the most significant dialogues in American history—right up there with the George W. Bush/John Kerry debates.

Because it took place between two people who just a few months before were still calling each other Pizza Face and Miss Piggy and preferring not to be seen in the same room, car or restaurant booth by their respective friends.

Because that conversation took place between me and my brother.

It was so weird. Ever since I could remember, Michael and I had been fighting—over who had a bigger piece of cake or who got to ride in the front seat on a three-block ride to the grocery store. We couldn’t even sit down to watch TV without battling over what show to watch or who was going to hold the remote control.

“You two used to play so cute together when you were little,” Mom said to us one day when Michael was snapping me with a towel during a dishwashing session.

“You got us confused with somebody else’s kids, Mom,” Michael said.

“I wish you were somebody else’s kid,” I muttered.

“I think you are somebody else’s kid,” he muttered back.

Someone Pinch Me: Am I Awake?
That may not seem weird. THIS is what’s weird. When I started high school, two years behind Michael, things gradually changed. It began when I brought home my class schedule the first day. He was in the kitchen, foraging, and I went in to catch any crumbs that might be left over.

“Who do you have for geometry?” he said.

Dazed, I looked around the kitchen. “Who . . . me?” I said.

“I don’t see anybody else in here.”

“Cranston,” I said.

“No way! Get out of that class, or you’ll never see the light of day until after the final.”

“But I can’t get a schedule change now! They said—“

“Forget ‘they.’ There are ways. I’ll get you out of there. Who’ve you got for English?”

“Getz.”

“Cool. Biology?”

It wasn’t until later that I realized we’d gotten through an entire conversation without snarling. I didn’t even slam my door when I went to my room.

I thought at first it was just a mental lapse he’d had—that maybe he mistook me for some stranger passing through the kitchen. But that wasn’t the end of it.

The next week he got his license, and naturally he looked for every excuse to drive the car. Mom caught on fast that he could now do taxi duty, and he started carting me to gymnastics and choir practice and Liz’s house. He didn’t complain—I mean, it got him behind the wheel.

During those rides, he started coaching me on how to get through Getz’s essay tests and teaching me what the clutch was for. It was during those rides that we started calling each other Bro’ and Amanda Panda instead of Pizza Face and Miss Piggy.

Now, mind you, we weren’t making pacts to name our firstborn after each other or anything. But I was convinced that if my skin accidentally touched his, he wasn’t going to scream and run for the cootie-killing spray. It was obvious he thought I was OK. And then that one Friday night I was really convinced.

Heart to Heart
It was Michael’s first weekend night to take the car out. He was supposed to be in by 11 p.m. He called at 11:15.

“Flat tire,” I heard Dad say when he hung up the phone. “I tried that story when I was 16. Does he think we’re stupid?”

“I think lame is the word they use now,” Mom said.

It occurred to me that maybe Michael did have a flat tire. It didn’t occur to our parents until he came home and found he had to convince them by pointing out the spare on the right rear and the flat in the trunk.

“Oh. OK,” Dad said. “It’s late. Let’s go to bed.”

Michael was the first one to go—and he slammed his door.

I didn’t blame him for his anger. Around midnight, I heard him come out of his room, and I followed him into the kitchen. Michael always grazed when he was upset.

“He could have at least apologized for not believing you,” I said, handing him the peanut butter he couldn’t locate because males can never move anything to find what they want.

“No doubt. It’s like they raise this good Christian son, then look for reasons not to trust him. Why is there never anything to eat in this house?”

“Because you live here,” I said. “There’s cold pizza in the meat drawer.”

“How come you always know this stuff?”

“I’m female.”

He looked at me for a minute as if he’d never considered that fact before. Then he plopped a plate of Mom’s homemade pizza on the kitchen table and dragged the chair up to it.

“Want some, Amanda Panda?” he said.

“Sure. I love acid indigestion.”

“I’ll split a bottle of Pepto-Bismol with you later.”

From there on, it was . . . how do I describe it? A special night.

We talked about everything—how glad we were that Mom and Dad had raised us to be Christians and what had made us each commit our lives to Christ. We shared bummer stories about kids putting us down because we didn’t swear and pressuring us to go to drinking parties. By the time we’d gotten the pizza down to crusts, we’d even told each other how we prayed.

“You know what’s cool?” he said.

“What?”

“We used to hate each other. Now we actually pray to the same God.”

I was awake a long time that night. I couldn’t go to sleep until I finally put something together: If you share the most secret part of yourself with a friend, you get a little nagging doubt later because you’re afraid she might tell somebody else. But when your friend is your brother, you don’t have that, because you know you can trust him. He’s family.

“Night, Amanda Panda,” he said outside my door.

“Night, Bro’,” I said.

After that I started writing in my journal the stuff we talked about in the car—just for the record—like jokes we had . . . even whole conversations. It was like I had this whole new friend.

Hey! What Happened?
And then that Tuesday afternoon happened.

About 3:30 I went into the kitchen to empty the dishwasher and found Michael in there with two of his basketball buddies, Jason and Scott. They were sitting at the table practically salivating, and Michael was pulling open drawers and slamming cabinet doors.

“Do you have a search warrant?” I said.

“I smell brownies. I know Mom made brownies.”

“Mom and Dad are gone until after dinner,” I said. “She made us a casserole and brownies.”

“Where are they?”

I lifted the lid to the cookie jar and pointed in.

“Thanks, Miss P.,” he said, then pinched my cheek.

Pinched my cheek. I stared at him as he tucked the cookie jar under his arm and plopped down at the kitchen table with it. I should have known what was coming right then.

“We got any milk?” he said, his mouth crammed with brownie.

The hair started standing up on the back of my neck. “Try the refrigerator,” I said.

“Hey, she’s pretty good,” Scott said.

Michael gave me a drop-dead look and said, “She thinks she’s good.”

I wasn’t sure what was going on, and I’m sure my face showed it. I turned my back on him and started yanking glasses out of the dishwasher.

“You’re a freshman?” someone said behind me.

“Unfortunately,” I said.

“I thought Michael was lying. You don’t look like a freshman.”

“Give her time, man. She’ll catch up,” Michael said, staring intently at the milk he was pouring. “She hasn’t lost all her baby fat yet.”

Before I could hurl a stack of plates at him, Jason said, “No—I mean, you look older than that. I saw you working out with the J.V. girls’ basketball team the other day, and I went, Whoa, what’s that junior doing with all those freshmen?"

Michael proceeded to choke on a brownie and lunged for his milk glass. I tried to kill him with one piercing glare, but he kept gasping for air.

“Really! You’re pretty good,” Jason said to me. “You oughta come shoot some baskets with us.”

Michael made a miraculous recovery and yelled, “No way!”

“You afraid she’ll make you look bad?” Scott said.

“Nah. I’m afraid we’ll hurt her.” Michael held out his empty glass to me. “Why don’t you put this in the dishwasher before you run along, huh?”

Who IS This Guy?
I didn’t “run on along.” In fact, I was pretty proud of the exit I made. I smiled sweetly at them all—except for Michael, at whom I curled my upper lip—and then I swept from the kitchen with the cookie jar in hand.

What I really wanted to do was dump the whole thing over Michael’s head and yell, “Eat them all, Pizza Face! I hope you turn into one big zit!”

By the time I got to my room—and slammed the door—every inch of me was stinging. I’d played Michael’s game and maybe even won. But the fact that he’d started it to begin with hurt me inside and out. I whipped out my journal and started scribbling.

“So much for our ‘friendship,’ Brother,” I scrawled.

That was as far as I got. I wanted to go on with, “I hate him. I hate him. He made me look like a fool in front of his friends just when I thought I could trust him to treat me like a person. He made me think I could trust him, and I can’t—and I hate him!”

But I couldn’t write it, because I didn’t hate him. I loved him. In the last couple of weeks I’d really started to figure out who he was, and I liked what I was finding out. I wanted the relationship with him that he’d shown me we could have, and now he was playing around with it like one of his stupid basketballs.

I tossed my pen across the room. Maybe my parents were right. You could raise this good Christian son, but you really couldn’t trust him to behave like one.

I pulled a brownie out of the cookie jar, but before I could stuff it in my mouth I stopped. And what about me? What about that sweet exit I’d just made from the kitchen? Was I any better? I mean, like, now what? Was I going to sit around and wait for him to make the next move? Or was I going to make like a Christian and love instead of hate?

I don’t like admitting it, but just then I wasn’t sure. I didn’t find out myself until later.

True Confessions
Around 6 p.m. I heard Michael alone in the kitchen. He must have opened and closed the refrigerator door five times without taking anything out.

My mind was saying I hope you starve, but my feet took me out there, where I opened the door to the fridge, moved the milk carton, found the casserole and popped it into the microwave. I felt like a robot the way I was moving, and Michael wasn’t much looser. He stood in the middle of the kitchen and mumbled, “Will we need ketchup for that?”

“I would assume so,” I said, voice chilly. “You put ketchup on just about everything, don’t you?”

He made one attempt to locate the bottle and then barked, “Well, where in the world is it?”

That’s when I knew what I was going to do.

I turned around and plastered myself against the pantry door. “It’s in here,” I said. “But you’re not getting it until you answer a question for me, so unless you want to starve, you’d better be honest.”

He rolled his eyes and plunked himself down at the table.

“Why would you start a really good friendship with somebody—and then turn on her?” I said. “You know, make her look stupid in front of people, that kind of thing?”

Michael lifted his lip. “I wouldn’t. I would never do that! Ask any of my friends.”

With a leap I left the pantry and whirled to face my reflection in the oven door.

“Mandy,” I said to it, “you’re one of Michael’s friends—or at least I thought you were. Has he ever done that to you?”

I put both hands up to my face. “Why, yes, as a matter of fact just today he made a total fool out of me in front of two guys. All this time he’s been treating me like a real person, but he doesn’t seem to want his friends to know that. After all, I’m his little sister—gross!”

“Oh, come on, Mandy!” Michael said. “I was with my . . . it’s a whole different thing.”

I spun around to face him. “Michael, I wasn’t going to horn in on your whole afternoon. I’m not interested in going out and shooting baskets with you. And even if I were, did you really think I was going to stand there and whine because you guys wouldn’t give me the ball?”

I came toward him at the table and slapped my hands on the counter. “I just wanted to be treated with respect, because that’s what I’ve learned to show you. And it has to be all the time, not just when nobody else is looking.”

The microwave dinged, and I flung it open. “Stir it and put it in for three more minutes on high,” I said as I headed for the door. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Hey—“ he said.

“The ketchup’s in the pantry!”

“No. Mandy—wait!”

I stopped, but I didn’t turn around.

“Look,” he said behind me. “I know I was a jerk. I knew it when I was doing it . . . and I’m sorry. It’s just—I thought you’d think you were supposed to hang around with me all the time or something.”

I looked at him then, and I just shook my head. “It’s kind of like a friend of mine once said. Why would you raise this cool sister and then look for reasons not to trust that she would always be cool?”

This Is What Friendship’s All About
When I got to my room I didn’t slam the door, so it was still open when about an hour later Michael poked his head in.

“Hey, Amanda Panda, I’m still hungry,” he said. “Wanna go get a milk shake?”

“You buying?” I said.

“Why? Don’t you have money?”

“Sure I do.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He looked at me innocently. “Can I have some?”

I snorted and threw a pillow at him. “In your dreams!”

A grin broke over his face as he tossed it back. “Get your shoes on and meet me in the Jeep.”

He gave me a look then—a look that said I’m sorry, and I love you and I respect you, and I’m glad you’re my kid sister.

I couldn’t record that in my journal. So I just kept it in my heart.